Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 74. (Read 105875 times)

All of this bickering can boil down to one central difference between us. You build your system of ethics up from utilitarian principles, while we build ours from deontological ones. Unless one side can find some way to convince the other that their base is fundamentally flawed, all of this is just hand wringing.

The problem with cost/benefit is there's no mention of justice. If you can save billions by killing millions, you'll do it. If one guy dying can give his organs to save 10 different people, on the chopping block he goes.

...based on well-reasoned cost/benefit analysis using actual research and arrived at through mass debate and discussion.


As opposed to your liberland, where you just pull "rights" out of your ass and then kill everyone that doesn't agree with them.



Allowing everyone and their mentally unstable mothers to own nukes offers no real benefit, but has tremendous costs of millions of lives or potentially all life... therefore we don't do it.

Allowing a crazy guy to juggle knives on a life raft offers no benefit other than his own entertainment, but could potentially cost the lives of everyone on the raft... therefore we don't do it.

Allowing the open purchase of guns results in a relatively insignificant number of extra firearms related deaths per year, but it allows law-abiding folks to defend themselves on the order of millions of times annually... therefore we allow it.

It's a good thing that morality is a popularity contest.


There's nothing absurd about not allowing "risky behavior" to be basis for acting with violence. What you are so keen to leave out is how I pointed out that if we start following that logic that we might arrest all teenage males because they are at a greater risk for committing crimes. That's just as absurd to me. The difference between us is not that both of our views can lead to things the other considers absurd but rather that when I am faced with what you claim is absurd, I don't abandon my principles. You do. Which leaves your world looking very arbitrary and ad hoc. Juggling knives isn't ok but other risky behavior is, where you draw the line is just based on some subjective gut feeling. I don't need to insult you either because I know your argument is weak without being forced to ridicule it.

That's right.  I don't think Hawker and ferg were here for that, so they don't understand how truly circular and idiotic their arguments are.

If I do prove to you that regulating the sale of fertiliser has saved lives, do you then accept that it makes sense to regulate it?

You are the one asking other people to accept being killed by nukes, smallpox and fertiliser based bar bombs.  The onus of proof is on you. 

I can assure you with a very very high degree of confidence the following two things:

1) Most people would consider what b2c considers sensible to be absurd.
2) Regulating WMDs is better than not regulating WMDs.

Feel free to conduct a public poll. Even here if you want, but that's kind of like asking fans who their favorite baseball team is at a ballpark.

That may or may not be so.  Your statement only afirms the general principle that everyone considers himself to be the 'moderate', and assumes that most people believe as he does.  Most people also assume that a popular opinion is evidence for it's validity.  This has often been proven in error in the past.

What seems sensible to you seems absurd to most.

Are you describing libertarianism or the current state here in the USA?


As opposed to non-arbitrary morality? Like what? From God?


As opposed to paying tax to the public police force? At least when private security companies allow Oklahoma City style bombings to happen they'll go out of business instead of just going about business as usual.


How likely is that though? If I owned a street I'd make sure things like that weren't allowed. Don't like it? Build your own street.


It's amazing you can say this without a hint of irony. Do you think O.J. Simpson would have been acquitted without piles of cash? You're describing the statu quo. At least with competing courts we can refuse to do business with corrupt ones.


That's actually not true. If you own a house and an airport builds next to you, that wouldn't be allowed under libertarianism. Also, it's very likely that few people would buy property without some sort of contract with the surrounding areas.


That's a bad thing?


Right because everyone under the state's protection is perfectly safe at all times in all places. Murder? What's that? That never happens anymore thanks to the magic powers of the state.

That's just it, not all such expressions are arbitrary.  There really are differences between a weapon held in the hand, such as a knife or a handgun, and controlled by a single person and the kind of weapon that is not held in the hand, and is automatic.  The distiction is the precision of use.  The rifle and handgun are valid uses of force only under particular circumstances.  Circumstances that an automatic weapon such as a trap or a mine can't reasonablely determine, because they are just machines.  The trap cannot identify if the intruder is a rapist or a firefighter.  The bomb cannot kill only the target while leaving the bystanders unharmed.  The user of the weapon is responsible for it's actions, regardless of his own intent, and this is why a rocket launcher is tightly regulated in the US while the rifle much less so.  Notice that I didn't say that a rocket launcher was prohibited, because they are not.  Nor are machine guns, tanks, silencers or even explosives.  These dangerous items are regulated, but not to the same degree that you seem to believe is neccessary.  Regulation isn't all or nothing, how it's done also matters.  For example, any citizen can buy a silencer, but must apply for a federal 'stamp' first.  In doing so, they submit to the ATF doing background checks on their character.  If any history or mental illness or violent criminal tendencies show up, they get denigned.  But they don't get denied because they don't belong to the right political group, race, religion or class.  They only get denied based on what they have actually done.  Likewise, anyone who could buy the silencer could by a rocket launcher, with the additional cavet that he has to be willing to show that he has a place to store it that, should it detonate unintentionally, there will be no harm to bystanders or neighbors.  If the person lives alone on a farm, that's easy enough.  If he lives in a city or suburb, he has to have a explosion rated arms locker, something that costs much more to own then the rocket launcher.  But these kinds of collectors actually exist, and they love to show off their collections.  There is a gun range, near Fort Knox in Kentucky, that is rated for destructive devices, and twice a year hosts the largest machine gun and explosives show in America.  Anyone can go there and rent a GE minigun to shoot for a few minutes, if you can afford it.  Flamethrowers and TOW missles are available, for the right price.  And ATF agents are walking everywhere.  No one has ever been shot or killed.  After dark, tracer rounds are fired into the dark at the rate of thousands per minute; and barrels of petrol are lit and vault flames into the night sky.  It's a great time.  Is there any compeling reason that these collectors shouldn't be able to engage in their hobby?  Do they honestly constitute a threat, considering the weapons that they possess cost a small fortune to aquire and use?  Do they deserve to be automaticly treated as potential terrorists for the expressed desire to engage in a risky form of entertainment?  Who are you to decide, particularly arbitrarily?  Shouldn't even the government be expected to follow some kind of principle, and not permitted to regulate personal activities and purchases based on someone's arbitrary decisions?  That would be the rule by law, not the rule of law.


I presume you're being sarcastic - it's sometimes hard to tell in ASCII.